


edenstar

by matchaball



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Biblical References, Gen, and a little bit of humanity within the divine, angel au, in which there is a little bit of the divine within humans, past ladybug - Freeform, tikki born as a star from eden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 09:52:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7263130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchaball/pseuds/matchaball
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It begins in a garden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	edenstar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jesuisunjardin](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=jesuisunjardin).



> Disclaimer: this fic takes very liberal artistic license with Jeanne's true history and the roles and characterization of biblical angels as a whole. I researched like a heck-ton for this, but there are bound to be inconsistencies and inaccuracies which you can blame entirely on the interfering force that is my imagination. 
> 
> Entirely inspired by the gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous [ Jeanne d'Arc art](http://jesuisunjardin.tumblr.com/post/145055291773/jeanne-darc-as-ladybug-based-on-thomas-astrucs) by [jesuisunjardin](http://jesuisunjardin.tumblr.com/).

It begins in a garden.

It’s beautiful, she’s been told. A place where trees grow up and out in logarithmic spirals, ringed by leaves that remain forever green. Crowned with clusters of fruit, sweet and succulent and rich, from which all taste thereafter is only but an echo of. Nestled with seeds slumbering in the fertile ground, of which galaxies, planets, suns, worlds will grow from. Populated with flowers who unfurl their hands to open up their hearts, revealing sleeping stars resting in their nurseries.  

It is the garden of creation, the garden everlasting.

When a sword is placed onto Uriel’s hands, when she is stationed to guard the closed and locked gate, she knows she will never see it.

 _Good luck, sister_ , Michael murmurs as he kisses her brow. Uriel watches him march back to war, his wings heavy with grief and stained with the blood of their brothers.

It’s not right, she wants to say, for Michael has only ever known how to love.

But it’s not her place, so Uriel says nothing at all.

.

.

.

The sword in Uriel’s hand has only ever cut one thing.

Millennia upon millennia upon millennia flicker past after her initial assignment, and she has only received a handful of visitors. Michael comes by to check on her occasionally, always more tired and heartbroken than the last she sees him. He always leaves her with a kiss, and she knows then that he still has it in him to love.

Eve comes with a jar full of ashes in her hands, and it is Uriel’s first encounter with the dust that Father shaped, that Michael still loves, that Lucifer empowers. The sword turns in Uriel’s hands, barring the door into the garden. Eve doesn’t leave, and Uriel doesn’t move.

Eve is so alien in her fragility and age, so unstable and breakable in her body’s limitations to contain the quasar still coursing through her veins. She keeps Uriel company for less than an eyeblink, but she fills the space full of stories and life. Her death brings a strange sensation of loss (Uriel never pinpoints when Eve started becoming something that she chose to keep), and she becomes Uriel’s first casualty in this war.  

Gabriel comes once, and Uriel’s ears still ring with the song he heralds at her in perfect fourths. 

The sword in Uriel’s hand hums with that song, pulsing slowly in lightwaves that encompass infinite colours. The heat of it singes the feathers of her wings if she brings them too close, and if she looks at the blade straight on, light sings on and on and on, ageless and timeless. It reminds her a little of Eve and her stories.

Uriel taps the edge once with her finger. Dark matter bleeds from her cut.

 _What happened?_ Michael asks the next time he visits.

She doesn’t really know. _Curiosity_ , is the answer that rolls from her tongue in surprise.

He looks at her then, a mix of sorrow and hope. His gaze turns to see beyond the impenetrable walls that she guards, and she knows he must be seeing Eden as he remembers. Perfect and beautiful and divine.

 _Take care_ , he warns before he leaves. His hands cradles her cut finger with a tenderness and fondness she didn’t think was possible. _Humanity grows in the garden still, too_.  

.

.

.

When stars grow to certain maturity, they ignite and fly from the garden in a shower of sparks. 

The garden is easy to love. Easier to leave. Impossible to return to.

Uriel wonders why anything or anyone would want to leave that perfect sanctuary. The cut on her finger pulses, and she already knows the answer.

She watches them go sometimes, between overseeing the war her brothers still fight and die in. The stars are so small, so infinitesimal that they appear not as singularities but as clouds and clusters to her many eyes. A haze of shimmering light unburdened by anything.

When a single star detaches itself and falls back down to gaze at Uriel, the blade in her hand rests easy. What rises instead to greet it is her hand, curved in a cradle like Michael’s. Her marked finger strokes that speck of stardust, as close to a kiss as she can give.

 _Semper ad meliora_ , she bids it.  

The star flutters against her hand in such an innocent and young gesture.

It goes, as all things eventually do with Uriel.

Dust, she realizes as she watches the star fall and fall and fall into that whirling blue green pinprick that makes her dizzy to stare at, can come alive in golden light.

.

.

.

The star comes back again, many eons later. It’s bigger, tinged a colour that Uriel knows. Red, like blood and knowledge and sweetness.

 _I call myself Tikki_ , the star introduces itself.

The concept of naming, of a star distinguishing itself in such a way is so perplexingly unfamiliar to Uriel. What goes on in that blue green speck that inspires such a need for individuality, for change?

 _Would you like to find out?_ The star- Tikki- asks. The offer does not feel like temptation, but one hardly knows the taste of a fruit before biting into it.

In a time before a sword was placed in her hands, Uriel would not have even contemplated straying from her task. A soldier does not question. An angel does not wonder.

She feels a little less than both these days, ever since she cut her own finger.

 _Show me_ , she allows to the little star. Her sword hums.

.

.

.

It turns out, no one needed to show Uriel anything. She’s always been prone to visions of the future that will come to pass. All archangels suffer from this abnormality, this abrasion in their infinite gaze.

The form that appears in her vision is not unlike Eve, is Uriel’s first thought. There is hair burnished fertile brown, skin stretched taut and strong against the atoms still molding and churning and changing within her body, eyes that spark fiercely with gold light.

 _Dust_ , Uriel remembers, but that is not all. There is something else about this girl. Her heart has a weight that Uriel doesn’t remember being an integral part to humans, for all that their construction is a constant state of messy and chaotic experimentation. There is the gravity of a nebula waiting to erupt with her flickering light.

But Uriel knows the fragility of humans also. She saw Eve crumble and wither before her many eyes, and that loss still echoes somewhere within her. So what makes this girl strong? Strong enough to withstand scintillating parallax, hymns sung in waves of radiation, scriptures written in shades of ultraviolet?

(This is a thing Uriel is starting to learn. Humans make her _question_.)

 _It’s in her name_ , Tikki answers, and there is that again. Naming. The act of separating, of choosing and claiming identity. _She is called Jeanne_.

 _Jeanne_ , Uriel tries. Human language tastes so strange on her tongue. _Jeanne_. Her name is a strong one, strong enough to bear the grace of God.  

 _She’ll like you_ , Tikki beams. _She is much like you_.

Two thoughts very different from each other, and yet is is only the second statement that Uriel takes notice of. The concept of being liked is entirely immaterial to her.

 _She cannot see to the end of all things. She cannot understand quadratic reciprocity. She cannot fathom the burning of protostellar mass from where my brothers rise and bleed._ For a split second, Gabriel comes Uriel’s mind. _She cannot sing in perfect fourths_.

 _No, she cannot,_ Tikki admits. _But she is strong, and she believes. Isn’t that enough?_

It’s all Uriel has ever known, since Father shaped her from a photon seed. Belief is the iron that keeps her hand steady on her sword, that keeps her faith within the war Michael removed her from. 

 _You’ll see_ , Tikki assures her kindly.

 _I shall_ , Uriel agrees. It is an indisputable, absolute fact.

Eden cannot be left unguarded and Uriel cannot leave her station, but that is hardly a limitation. If anything, the distance and degree of separation might be for the better. Uriel remembers how easily Eve had crumbled under her gaze, and Eve still had quasar pulsating in her ribcage. After Adam, Eve had been closest to the divine and she still suffered for it when knowledge broke open her eggshell head.  

 _Humans are made in your image, but they are both lesser and greater for it_ , Tikki says.  _They don’t have that spark of grace that you are composed of, but if they choose, they_ can _. It’s their greatest strength and downfall, the power of choice_.

 _I know_ , Uriel says. _That is why my brothers and I fight, why Father retreats to the garden. That is why you left when you grew strong enough._

Uriel cannot fathom it. Choice is not made for angels. 

She falters. Lucifer chose. Lucifer, her brother who Michael loves best, her brother who fell and chose to remain fallen. In that moment, she understands now why Lucifer and his brothers can still fight back against Michael and Father’s armies as strongly as they do. In choosing, in falling, he must be closer to humans than any of them.

No wonder Michael loves him so, Uriel thinks sadly. No wonder Gabriel mourns in minor thirds.

 _That’s ok, you don’t need to choose_ , Tikki says as if she is lifting a weight from Uriel’s shoulders. The little star confuses her for a human sometimes, Uriel believes. There is no weight to lift because choice is not a burden she can carry. _Jeanne has already chosen, and she only needs a guide._  

_And you, little star?_

Tikki shimmers with burning red light, sparking in happiness. Wavelengths flutter from her back like wings, a form not unlike Uriel’s own.

 _I am a messenger_ , she chirps. She pauses, then asks, _Aren’t all stars?_

Uriel stares at this little seedling from the garden that she has guarded for eternities, and does the impossible.

She _laughs_.

There are bells that ring sonorously through the air, light and crystal clear. This is what Eden must have felt like: the circular chorus of _gloria in excelsis deo_ in perfect harmony, unburdened by the drums and horns of war.

 _Tikki_ , Uriel says, and she is smiling. _Little star. You are not like the others._ _You have found a cause for yourself to fight in, even with the whole of the universe before your light. Why is that? Why do you choose to fight?_

Uriel has known of nothing else. Her bones thrum with the vibrations of war, with the clashes of swords. Her ears ring with the cries of her brothers. The sword in her hands tempers its light and edge with the old songs, the forgotten songs. Her forehead burns with the mark of Michael’s kisses.

 _I do unto them as you did once unto me,_ Tikki explains softly, gently. _I love._

.

.

.

When Uriel refracts herself like light and follows Tikki to Earth, she appears in a garden.

It’s lush and green, with the scent of soil and fear cloying the air. The heat of her light singes the tall blades of grass, the delicate leaves, the fragile flowers. Uriel pulls her wings close and closer still; never before has she had to contain herself into something so small.

And yet the child before her is as small as a seedling star, but even smaller for the lack of divinity within her. The child draws her coltish limbs up like she may stand and grow from the ground from which she sits; Uriel’s light reflects from her bright eyes as terror.

“Softly,” Tikki suggests.

Light is, or is not; Uriel does not know what it means to be soft. But she does know what it means to be young, so she folds herself down and down and down to the earth, to the child.

Eve, Uriel wants to say, but for all that this girl has brown hair, strong skin, bright eyes, she is too young and too scared. The instability within her churns hot and uncertain, volatile in a way that Eve was not.

And yet.

Despite her fear, Jeanne sits up and cranes her thread-slender neck to look up to Uriel. Her tiny hands come up as if to touch, though they only pass through the infinite colours of Uriel’s light undulating through the air.

A humming vibrates in the space between them, pressing upon Jeanne’s brow like a kiss.

“Michael,” Jeanne sings. _Michael._

 _Yes_ , Uriel answers before Tikki can correct her. Her light bows and bends and reaches, gently. _Be not afraid._

.

.

.

Time passes by so quickly on Earth.

 _It’s not Earth_ , Tikki clarifies. _It’s humans._

Time and the passing of had meant nothing to Uriel since the moment she first became. There was only duty and the sword humming in her hands. Humans had meant little more than the crux of which her brothers warred over.

Time was inconsequential; humans, mere atoms.

“Michael,” Jeanne calls out softly. “Are you here with me?”

 _Always_ , Uriel answers. She is finding now that there can be no other way; she must be so _present_ , to keep up with time. Blink slowly, and it is already gone. Blink not at all, and she witnesses Jeanne’s blur of growth from scared child to purposeful young woman, from simple farm girl to a symbol of hope and faith in the Royal Court.  

“And the saints,” Jeanne whispers, searching.

“By your side,” Tikki answers. She hangs upon Jeanne’s ears in the form of gleaming red stones, always glowing faintly with unearthly light.

Uriel is no more Michael than Tikki is any of the saints, but Jeanne is no mere atom to be overlooked either. They are all a little something different, a little something more; but that is what happens, when war sweeps them all up and demands all that they are.

Irony tastes surprising, flavoured with a hint of humour. The war Uriel has known for all of her existence is fought over humans, and the crusade she has embroiled herself in now has turned its nature over to seek the favour of God.

Somewhere, Uriel thinks she can hear Gabriel laughing at her in the golden ring of bells.

The hacking coughs of Jeanne puncture the air, and she doubles over on her horse to hide the blood spat onto her crimson tunic. The banner staff in her hands nearly drops to the ground.

Delivering the Word of God demands a vein of strength that not many can withstand. For all that Jeanne councils Charles VII, the Duke of Alençon, and the array of commanding officers into securing victory in sieges and battles, her mouth constantly holds the hot tang of iron, the remnants of portent stars. The edges of Jeanne’s mouth are far too tender for the words that drop from her tongue like fruit; like Eve, she pays for the price of knowledge.

“Jeanne?” Tikki worries.

“I’m fine,” Jeanne rasps. “Though I cannot show weakness now, not when we march to take back Paris. I must remain strong. They look to me, for guidance.” 

 _Not all_ , Uriel cautions. The royal army that breaks camp around them hold their own score of dissenters. Whispers denouncing Jeanne as a witch, a sorceress, a trickster linger like an undercurrent of poison. _There are some who still do not believe._

“Even after all I have done? Even after all I have said?” Jeanne murmurs in disbelief. She looks around and notes the few soldiers who look away, their faces dark beneath their helmets.

“I think you know what you must do,” Tikki says. Warmth flutters from her, in comfort and solidarity.

As if her words are a command, Jeanne rides to the crest of a hill overlooking their camp and halts. The banner staff thumps decisively onto the ground as she dismounts, drawing the eyes of every soldier up to her. A few mocking laughs ripple through the crowd, but that doesn’t stop them from gathering and watching.

 _They look for a miracle,_ Uriel reveals. _They look for God._

“You know the words,” Tikki whispers. “You can do it, Jeanne. You can, and you _are_.”

The staff in Jeanne’s hands twirls slowly, heavily, until it’s planted vertically between her feet. She grips the end hand over hand, her palms so very small and so very strong. Her gaze rises up from the ground to rest upon the royal army looking up to her, waiting, watching.

Her voice rings out low and strong, exulting, “ _Blessed be my grace.”_

It is the power of Tikki’s charm that makes the staff in Jeanne’s hands ignite with bright red flare, reforging the simple stick into a gleaming sword, but it is Uriel’s divinity that imbues the sword with light that hums in infinite colours. The glow reflects off Jeanne’s steel armour and her black spotted crimson tunic, burning her bright eyes gold, turning her being into a beacon.

As one, the soldiers kneel before her in fear, and wonder, and hope.

“For France!” Jeanne cries. The men raise their roars up to the sky, up to her.“For God!” 

She is only sixteen. Tikki needs her to transform. Uriel needs her to fight.

Jeanne does one better. She _leads_.

.

.

.

A vacuum follows them like a starving dog, devouring and hungrier still. War looks the same from here, no matter which one Uriel thinks of. Black holes rip open in their wake as self-cannibalizing pockets of ill luck and death, ugly even when claimed as a victory.

That sort of violent loss is transformative. Somehow, Uriel did not think the power of choice could weigh so heavily.

In the middle of a starless night where quiet presses in and muffles the minutiae of horses shuffling, men sleeping, armour creaking, Jeanne exhales. A long hour passes. Then, a question drops reluctantly, inevitably from her tongue.

“How do you know? If you’re fighting on the right side?”

Uriel’s peerless eyes look upon Jeanne and see only war, with Michael, battle-hardened and still kind; Lucifer, malignant and savage.

(She had asked, once, why Michael removed her to Eden; why Gabriel was sent away to Earth; why Raphael healed in the cocoon of tents set far, far, far from the battlefields.

 _It is the one thing Lucifer and I agreed on,_ Michael revealed, his fingers gently lifting her chin. There is a love within his touch that cauterizes her disquiet and grants her absolution. _We did not want you to see what war makes of us_.

 _Oh_ , Uriel exhales, young and trusting. _Oh_.)

Her light shivers, shields, and sharpens. Tikki flits up within her vision to offer comfort, but in her haze Uriel nearly smites her down.

She burns cold. So cold.

_You know when you have won._

.

.

.

Jeanne wears her victories in the black spots on her crimson tunic, marks of remembrance for those who died. Her crimson tunic is a flag of hope for those who rally to her on the battlefield, but there is no denying that hope bears an unsettling resemblance to blood.

“Orléans, Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire,” Jeanne recites, touching each black spot. “Beaugency, Patay, Reims, Paris, and Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier.”

She counts her military successes the same way she counts the prayers along her rosary each night, with a sort of reverence and and reflection that leaves her quiet after. Tikki sparks up along Jeanne’s short brown locks in a soothing gesture, highlighting her severe hairstyle.

It makes her appear much older, Uriel thinks, much wearier. The revealing nature of her visage offers no ceremony to the scar that bisects over her right eye, a reminder of one who thought cutting her sight would steal her visions.

He hadn’t thought that for long. Jeanne struck him down in the next moment, her blade singing through the air.

(“I didn’t think it would come down so heavily, or cut so coldly.” Jeanne cups her hands to cradle Tikki, soaking in the star’s warmth to stop the slight tremours that fissure across her palms. “Does it get any easier?”

 _No_. Uriel does not lie. _It does not._ )

“My king has been crowned, and my people brought back into the holy kingdom of France. There is much to be thankful for,” Jeanne reflects, and sighs. “I suppose I could only prove triumphant for so long.”

She draws her long limbs up like she may stand; but she remains huddled on the cold ground instead, away from the icy stone walls that imprison her. Cuts bleed along her bare hands and feet, tallymarks of the number of times she’s tried and failed to escape. There is not much Tikki or Uriel can do, except offer their unwavering light amidst the hostile company of the English who’ve captured her.

“I had hoped I could add Compiègne as another spot,” Jeanne admits, plucking at the bottom of her tunic where the red runs unmarked. Her head bows over, baring her vulnerable, thread-slender neck. Uriel looks down and watches time trickle over Jeanne’s skin in beads of sweat.

There will be a trial for her, if rescue or escape does not come first. As Jeanne looks up, awareness glitters in her gold eyes. She knows, that there will be no victory to claim if her fate is put at the mercy of the English.

A question sticks at the back of her throat. It is the one she wants and fears to know, but not the one she voices.

“Have we won?”

Uriel peers into the future that will come to pass, and looks upon Jeanne, battle-hardened and still hopeful. Still young, and strong, and full of life.

She simply presses a kiss upon Jeanne’s brow in answer.

It is Tikki who says what Uriel cannot. “Be not afraid, Jeanne. Have faith.”

.

.

.

 _Guilty_ looks like the condemning gazes of the clerics in her tribunal, like the smug countenance of the Duke of Bedford, like the satisfied nod from the Earl of Warwick. _Guilty_ thrusts down upon Jeanne’s shoulders, heavy as a cross; and still, she stands strong, armed only in her crimson tunic and her faith.

When Jeanne walks towards the stake that will be her funeral pyre, she is stripped of armour and escort and dignity. Her bare feet stumble over dirt and rocks, her crimson and black tunic dwarfs her thin frame, her bright eyes flash at those who eagerly wait for her demise.

Those who merely look upon her appearance think her diminutive, but she is more pulsar than pulse in the weight of her presence and gravitational pull.

 _The brightest perish the swiftest_. Uriel has seen enough stars live and die to know this for certain.

Jeanne holds her head up proudly, devoutly as she climbs the platform and surrenders herself to her executioner. Her hands, scarred and calloused, fasten immovably to the stake as her sword comes to sink into the ground before her.

As the executioner steps away and retrieves a burning torch, Tikki kisses her cheek sadly, bestowing one last kindness to hold onto.

“Thank you,” Jeanne whispers to both her guardians. Her words bear the weight of all her devotion and gratitude.

Until this moment, Uriel did not know how deeply, how vastly humans could love. There is a divinity within that resonates and humbles her.

The torch approaches and strikes down, setting the mound of wood haloing Jeanne aflame. For a moment, there is only the cackle of fire as it sinks its teeth hungrily into its feast. The audience of English clergymen and nobles watches with pitiless eyes, a more frightening and saddening sight than the flames that lick at her feet.

If this is what war has made of men and monsters, then let her be the end.  

“ _Oh, God,_ ” Jeanne rings. “ _Deliver us from evil_.”

The fire jumps up, greedily devouring the hem of her tunic as it crawls up the wooden stake. When the flames ravage her flesh, the scream that sears the air echoes long and loud, sharp as a thunderclap.

The sword planted before her feet dissolves in a current of lightning that forks up through the stake, up through Jeanne’s very veins, and up towards the sky. The flash of white light ignites the plume of thick black smoke into a shower of sparks, scattering crimson light across the ground.

Jeanne is dead before the fire has grown to her knees. All that is left is for her empty body to burn.

It is the little mercy Uriel can give. It is the little cleansing Tikki can do.

They stand watch until only ashes remain.

 _You knew she would die like this, and still you came._ Tikki's voice rests on this side of accusatory. The wavelengths of light spasm furiously along the curve of her back. 

 _I saw,_ Uriel acknowledges. _And_ _I could change her fate no more than I can change the End of Days. But- she could have. There had been a chance for her to change her fate, for she saw the same as I; and still she chose truth and faith._

Anger transmutes to mourning, lilting from Tikki in powerful, slow waves rolling heavy with loss. In the garden, there had been no way to grieve except for a vast emptiness that yawned within. Earth is so much more present, so much more reactive; it feels sorrow, and offers release.

The tears that fall from Tikki, silver and bright, are so very human.

 _She is not the first I’ve lost, but it still hurts. It always hurts,_ Tikki admits. She looks up to Uriel, as if seeking an answer. _I miss her._

There is nothing except an empty chasm that presses into Uriel’s chest, creating an aching hollow. Her fathomless eyes are not made to cry, so it's her words that fissure, fracture, and fall.

 _I_ , Uriel starts, and falters. Her voice is very small. _I miss her too._

.

.

.

The garden of Eden feels smaller and emptier these days; but it may also just be her. Uriel is left only with the sickly sweet smell of rotting fruit and the pungent iron of burning stars. A strange echo of loss hums mournfully from the blade between her hands. The light flickers and the heat of it singes her feathers like fire.

Tikki comes once more, many years later. Her light glows ever redder, ever more like the skin of apples. That is how stars grow and live; but when Uriel looks at her, she sees only death.

 _There is this girl_ , Tikki begins, and falters. She starts again. _Her name is Marinette_.

A question lingers between them, tentative and fragile.

 _No,_ Uriel answers, absolute. The taste of humanity lingers in the corners of her mouth even now, ashy, bittersweet and hungering. _Once was enough._

 

**Author's Note:**

> This whole concept was written mostly, if not entirely for self-indulgence. I have a lot of feelings about angels and space and stars and Jeanne d’Arc has never provided a more perfect opportunity for me to just stretch my wings out and see how far I can reach. 
> 
> If by some surprising and delightful chance that you gave this fic a try and made it all the way down here, I thank you completely and wholeheartedly with a million smooches and hugs.
> 
> Feel free to come poke me on [tumblr!](http://matchaball.tumblr.com/)


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